All You Test Subjects
by milesandmiles97
Summary: The terrifying story of Julia who gets a text one morning. -Leave your house they're coming to get you- it says. The number is private and Julia has no idea to whom the message is referring. This is then followed by a strange call from a medical research group, a part of the Ministry of Truth, informing Julia that her participation in their study is compulsory...
1. Text Message

Julia got the text early in the morning, during her coffee and her breakfast. "Leave your house theyre coming to get you" it said. Who were they and who had sent the text? The number was private.

It was the humour of a family member or a former work colleague, decided Julia, after a moment's consternation. although to send prank messages was certainly a thought crime. Nevertheless she put down her phone, went back to her coffee, her breakfast and her novel and acted as though nothing had happened for the benefit of the hidden camera that was visibly concealed in the smoke detector located towards the left corner of her living room. She was exactly half way through each when the home telephone rang.

She considered at first letting it go. Perhaps it could indeed be someone out to get her and in answering the phone she would make it easier for them to find her? Of course, having her number would indicate that they already had found her, not to mention that letting it ring might be somehow incriminating – possibly indicate a sense of guilt on her part, at worst somehow identifying her as a threat to the INGSOC regime and resulting in her arrest...

"Hello?" Said Julia, upon picking up the phone.

"Goodmorning, am I speaking to a Ms Julia Stucco?" Said a professional female voice.

"I'm Julia Stucco."

"My name is Sarah, I'm calling on behalf of the Dunderhaven Research Group here at Gumby. We're calling because we require your assistance for one of our studies; this will include a questionnaire and an interview, among other things. You will be remunerated for your time and two of our employees will be at your house at the conclusion of this phone call in order to transport you to one of our research facilities."

With a sudden feeling of intense unease, Julia replied,"This is a bit sudden, isn't it? I don't think I gave my consent for any research. What kind of research is this?"

"The Dunderhaven research group conducts medical research, mainly concerned with the gastro intestinal tract and numerous cellular pathologies thereof, including colorectal cancers, pancreatic cancers and mucositis in the treatment of cancer. Our most recent advances, however, have been in the area of diabetes and it is in this area that your participation will be of most use to us. Furthermore, I'm afraid that your consent has not been sought for participation in this study and nor will it be necessary, Ms Stucco."

"Really, and you mean to send people to take me away right now?" Said Julia, "I've worked in medical research in the past, for more than five years actually, and I know that you require participant consent. And I've never in my life heard of your research group, are you sure this is what you're really calling about?"

"That's right, Ms Stucco. We are the Dunderhaven research group, we are explicitly funded by the Inner Party, we function under the Ministry of Truth under the research division and as such our studies are extremely classified. Your background was a significant factor in your assignment to this particular study, Ms Stucco. So far, you have been privileged with not only the knowledge of our existence, but you have also been given the highly exclusive information as to our location being in the province of Gumby.

"Furthermore, we have a record of how you came to lose your prior job, Ms Stucco, and by all accounts it should be an honour for someone of your... history that our organisation should consider you at all. I'm sure that lately you have been unaccustomed to getting professional offers, especially from organisations with a similar standing to our own. Please keep in mind that we have given this opportunity to a select few candidates and in this instance, you have the good fortune to be among them." The woman paused for a moment presumably to let this information sink in, before continuing: "Our employees will be at your home momentarily. You will be required to comply quietly as you are taken to our facility."

Julia felt herself taken aback by this offer she had not applied for in any way and shown no prior interest in, the suddenness of which seemed to her deeply concerning. Piqued by this woman's knowledge of personal information, of her own history of failure, and the rudeness with which this was all relayed back to her, Julia replied, "If any of your people come even close to my property, I will be calling the authorities." She put the phone back on the receiver with a conclusive snap.

Well that was weird, Julia thought to herself.

She became more uneasy the more she thought about it. Nothing would have surprised her about the underhandedness of the inner party, including abduction under the false pretense of research participation. On the other hand, she had made a few enemies at her old job: there had been quite a scandal at the time.

Julia had helped to design a potential cure for more than one debilitating illness, but had been most successful in a single area, her research leading to what seemed like a quick, inexpensive cure. It had at first seemed like a miracle, but like many things in life it had proven too good to be true, the issue being that while the treatment worked flawlessly in the animal model, when applied as a trial on human subjects it turned out to be highly toxic. More than one member of the inner party, who had been so excited at the prospect of being cured that they had signed up immediately to the trial, had consequently dropped dead, the entire research group had been fired, their names blackened and any chance of future employment effectively ruined. Thankfully though, Julia had enough money to survive comfortably in her little flat on her own for the time being and she had also kept the government issued vehicle: a motorbike that with a burst of energy could fly short distances.

There were unquestionably a number of people she could imagine making that call just to frighten her. Probably it was simply someone playing a trick. Julia glanced out her front window but could see no one arriving at her house to transport her to any research facilities, as had been promised.

Still, it worried her enough to collect some food from her cupboard, a bottle of water and a smallish blanket and to pack it all into a bag that already contained her purse with her money and identification. She left it by her front door, thinking that now, if she had to, she could leave the house quickly if indeed someone uninvited turned up. These seemed like intense measures to have to come to, but it was good to be prepared for the worst, she supposed.

She sat back down on her couch and checked her mobile, but no more strange messages had been received. With some relief, she relaxed back into the couch. Julia had been leading a sedate, quiet life lately- or for some time now, in fact. She was a single woman in her early thirties, her house was perpetually cacophonously empty and any dissonance with her current lifestyle inclined her to get concerningly stressed. With little else to think about other than her own imaginings and her telescreen, she often dwelled on troublesome thoughts and the paranoia without a great stimulus that she was currently feeling was not unusual for her these days.

But this time it seemed more warranted- there, just across from her house, she noticed a black van had pulled up, that had two large, dark figures inside it.

Julia jumped from the couch and hurried to the door, keeping an eye fixed out the window on the two men as they ominously left their van and made their way down the path towards her front door.


	2. Hair Dye

Julia stood there, too tense to move, hiding behind the door with her head pressed against it to listen for the men and her heart sounding like it had relocated to somewhere between her ears. One of the men knocked at the door, and when Julia didn't answer, he called out, "Julia Stucco?"

He sounded calm enough from outside the door and even polite, but the phone call was just too random, it sounded too sinister. This won't be goodJulia thought. No matter what was going to happen, she would not be going anywhere with these men. This visit could, after all, be about anything and not just that phone call, just like the phone call could have been about anything and not just the research study. Julia had some idea of the horrors inflicted by the Ministry of Love on thought criminals- she at least knew for sure that they came back from the Ministry of Love drastically subdued and changed in appearance, or else they didn't come back at all. When they didn't come back, their entire identities were erased, and their names forgotten. If you so much as mentioned these people afterwards, you would be in grave trouble.

"Miss Stucco?" A pause.

"Miss Stucco?" Repeated one of the men, with all the politeness gone and knocking loudly at the door, making it jar against Julia's head. She could tell by the violence of the knock that they were going to bash it in if she didn't open it- she would have to be brave and move, lest it be broken in on her head; her hesitation could be wasting her only chance to get away.

With some great effort, she pulled herself away from the door, took up her bag and ran as quietly as she could through her living room, through her tiny kitchen to where it connected to the laundry, and then through the laundry door where it connected to her garage, the location of the only means of escape she could really conceive of. There was a big poster of Big Brother on her kitchen wall above the bench, which was government issued, and it watched her creepily as she rushed past. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU was the caption underneath. On the other wall was the dulled-mirror surface of her enormous living room telescreen. When it was on, it would flash the word INGSOC periodically, but now it just reflected the flash that was Julia as she rushed past, holding her handbag, in her standard-issue tight one piece outfit that was so stretchy and resilient it could probably fit any possible body type.

Julia was very much in shape and she could move quickly, although she never was the most decisive or the most clear minded. Less so in a state of panic, she seemed to loose control of her faculties and fumbled everything. After missing a few times, she clicked the button to open the garage door, which would slide up into the roof, letting her out into the front yard, just as she heard a thump as the men began to break the door in. She caught her helmet and climbed onto her bike, forcing her key into the ignition, just as she heard another thud and a crack as the men almost succeeded in kicking in the door, all the while the garage was opening painfully slowly. With a final thunk, crack and the sound of hurried footsteps and angry words she could make no sense of, Julia knew that the men were in her house.

The motorbike accelerated, Julia ducked her head and drove it straight out under the still perilously low garage door, which could easily have scalped her, had it been just an inch lower, outside and into what she considered a greater chance of safety. Glancing back over her shoulder from the end of the driveway she saw the two men standing in her garage watching her- they hadn't bothered to chase after. They wouldn't catch her anyway.

She left her driveway, she left her street and then she met a main road where she slowed down to merge with the traffic. Even in the short interval as she sped down her own road, she knew that there was probably already recorded footage of her flight. They would get an image of her number plate and her appearance and then the thought police would also be after her for trying to run away. Running away was a thought crime; sometimes it seemed that there was really no escaping them.

The houses down the street all looked the same and almost hypnotic as Julia drove past them: big boxes that were joined together at the sides. They had tinted windows and you never knew who was behind them, watching you. They all had two trees in the front yard and one rose bush for the sake of both simplicity and symmetry, as if upholding these things in neighbourhood gardens would somehow influence the neighbourhood lifestyles to uphold them as well.

Julia's neighbourhood was very new, very modern and sanitized. Towards the border of the outer-party neighbourhood and the prole slums, where areas of old, mostly unused and boarded up housing that sagged with rot and age. The difference was so extreme and so abrupt as to be a bit uncanny.

A police patrol helicopter was looming over the main road like an extra loud dragon fly, but they were common enough; they would have nothing to do with Julia. As she drove along, Julia calmed down somewhat and the worry impinged on her that she might have just self-destructively overreacted. Was it paranoid to run away from her home like this, from a simple research study? But these men had broken in her door, why do something so drastic if they didn't mean her harm? Not to mention that strange warning text that she'd gotten. And should she find somewhere safe and call the authorities after all, to tell them that an organization of crazy people were out to get her?

Where could she go anyway? She did not want to get her family or friends in trouble for harboring her.

Julia's flat had been somewhere near the coast-line, with the beach a few blocks away from her house. She decided to head further into the Eurasian mainland, maybe out into the countryside where she could hide away from surveillance, or into one of the large cities where she could blend in. The cities were where the Ministries were, and they all frightened Julia a bit, despite the fact that she'd technically worked for the Ministry of Truth in research. She thought she would head to the city anyway. She would take it a day at a time and then see what happened. She didn't even consider where she might stay at nighttime.

Julia followed the main road, until it joined to a motorway that was headed south in the direction she wanted to go. She could follow it along for miles, and this she did, as it passed through firstly the outer party suburbia, then the prole slums, the industrial area, back through the slums and on and on.

But as the day wore on, Julia realized her fuel gauge was running low and she was getting hungry and restless. She would have to stop at a petrol station and get some food as well. The thought, while unavoidable, struck her with fear, since the thought police could be anywhere, and she could be risking identification.

She was deep in a neighbourhood of prole slums now. The industrial area was merged with them and the whole thing just smelt like pollution. Julia pulled into a particularly run-down station of the kind that was paradoxically run by proles for members of the outer and inner parties, since a prole who could drive was rare and a prole who owned a car was rarer still, and yet the station was so run down, she couldn't imagine that they got much service from outer or inner party members.

Incredibly nervous, she got off her bike and went to fill it up. Inside the petrol station were some shabby looking groceries that were probably never replaced and an annoyed looking middle-aged prole woman behind the checkout. At least Julia assumed she was middle aged, but who could really tell with proles? Bad diets, stressful lives, too many children, pollution and possibly drinking aged them early.

Julia didn't have to worry about how much it would cost her to buy fuel here, although it lingered in her mind for a moment. She wasn't used to thinking about it like she was now. It was funny and a bit sad to think that money didn't really mean anything to people like her, but to others like this woman it was essential for even the meanest subsistence.

Julia, like all outer and inner party members, was given a modest allowance, weekly groceries, and a place to live, in return for performing the expected duties of someone of her category, ability and education, and here she was, still at a healthy and youthful thirty-one, and this prole woman could easily be the same age. Granted, there were some basic bonuses for good work and behaviour- Julia's allowance had been drastically cut and her food rations were basically all staples as a result of her unemployment. Generally though, money only mattered to the proles, and also the Ministry of Plenty and big businesses, when they were dealing with foreign affairs, which all seemed vague and confusing to Julia.

Julia took a packet of corn chips and found herself stopping at a self of cosmetics, which was certainly strange to be found in a gas station.

They had a small collection of hair dyes. Julia considered her own hair which was distinctively fair, and then took one of the darker colours, smiling at her own cleverness. Probably it was her bike that was the most distinctive thing about her, but to Julia, in the throes and bewilderment of what seemed to her like such an intense and dangerous situation, it seemed the perfect disguise to dye her hair, to throw off whatever parties of evil madmen were after her. At the checkout, out of nerves, she could barely look the prole woman in the eye. The woman didn't seem to notice or care too much. Understandably she would have been happy just to get a customer.

"Would you like a magazine with that, my dear? We 'ave sweets 'alf price n all." Said the prole woman with a kind smile that was missing a few teeth.

Julia bought the sweets to appease the woman, who put it through the checkout, swiped Julia's card and then gave Julia a noticeable look out of the corner of her eye. Had something come up on the screen? Flustered, Julia bought a magazine as well.

The sun was beginning to set, making the petrol station with its rust, litter and broken signs take on more of a threatening aspect. Across the road, there were a small group of young proles staring at Julia and her bike. She ignored them and set off again just as it started to rain.

Down the side streets now, there wasn't anywhere that she would have liked to stay, like motels or something, to get in out of the rain.

She drove past an old, decrepit building that used to be some kind of business she guessed, because it didn't look like the usual prole houses, since it was made of brick rather than just a pile of sheet metal screwed together to make a shelter, which was generally the abode of the average prole. She stopped there and thought for a moment.

Truthfully that was probably an exaggeration on Julia's part; the prole houses weren't quite as bad as that. But they were bordering onto it- otherwise there would have been half a dozen proles currently living in this building, with its empty door frames, smashed in windows, and no square yard of roofing that didn't contain a hole of varying severity.

Oddly, Julia thought maybe she should stay here. Maybe just until the rain stopped. It was an unexpected place for her to stay, it was sheltered.

The noise from the bike made Julia nervous that someone might hear, so she got off and wheeled it behind the building, to an overgrown parking lot that probably hadn't been used in something like a decade. The bike seemed like some kind of companion now and the only one Julia had when she needed it the most. She parked it and caught herself wanting to pat it like a dog, or confide in it, it seemed to look up at her with big, melting, eye-like head lights. What was wrong with her?

Julia went inside the miserable building, where the holes in the roof made for puddles on the floor from the rain, and found herself a dry spot where she sat to eat her corn chips. The puddles were inky black in the dim light, like pools of oil, but Julia was feeling calm. Well, she thought, at least it's not raining very much.

It began to bucket down. There was a heavy clatter on the aged tin roof, and the drips coming down from the holes became a trickle, becoming a constant stream of water and the puddles were dramatically growing. It was getting dark frightfully quickly.

Well, maybe I should dye my hair, Julia thought. After all, she couldn't be bothered looking for any taps in the building in the dark. They probably wouldn't work anyway.

She mixed together the dye from the packet and covered her hair with it. It wasn't too hard, even without a mirror. Julia's hair was so fair that it was very fine and thin and it didn't take much before it was all covered, although she was sure that she was covering her face as much as her hair and it was a miracle that she didn't get it in her eyes. She ate some more while the dye developed, then she then leaned over and rinsed her hair with a stream of water from the roof. The water was dirty with rust, and it felt awful, but it got the job done. Once finished, she sat back down, picked more food out of her bag and leaned back against the wall, thoughtfully, dwelling on old memories of her work that had been brought back by that weird phone call.

The sound of cars going by broke her out of her comfortable- despite the circumstances- reverie, and into a kind of frantic, trembling panic. Where was she after all, choosing to be in a place like this rather than at home, after telling those men to use someone else for their study, or calling the authorities like she'd threatened or like a sensible person would have done.

What was this? This was madness! This was paranoia! Surely a government couldn't treat her like this. Julia was never a nervous person, she was cool tempered, if a bit dithery. She was ambitious and logical. She once heard people at her old work call her icy and rude, but she didn't care. She'd never gone into a spin like this before and she wasn't the sort of stupid person who would. Trying to stay overnight in a derelict building made her feel horrified, a symptom of a kind of breakdown? From isolation? From losing her job? But that had still happened some time ago…

She couldn't believe it- she'd practically died her hair in a puddle! She was crazy! She was exhausted with herself. She would go back home and pretend that this never happened, treat it like some kind of transient anomaly. At least no one knew but her.

She got shakily to her feet, as the panic wore off, and felt her way along the wall, back towards the way she got in. As she headed towards the exit, she thought, well, it's better to be insane and to think that you're insane, than to be insane and think that you're sane, and it's better to be insane, than to be on the run from a potentially murderous organisation, destined for the ministry of love and never to be seen again.

The sun was well and truly set when she left the building, and there, outside, parked across from her motorbike, was a familiar black van.

Three people were standing there in the gloom- two men and one woman.

The woman spoke in a voice just as forebodingly familiar as the van: "Ms Stucco, you'll come with us now, please."

And Julia was glad for a moment that she wasn't nearly as crazy as she thought she was.


	3. Motorbike

"You're being stupid, come with us now, please." The woman repeated, all dark, serious and frightening, when Julia didn't move. She was undoubtedly the woman from the telephone call earlier that morning. The woman was wearing business clothing, and so were the men, but Julia didn't find the uniform at all familiar. She was sure that she had been lied to about where they really came from- they didn't look anything like any members of the Ministry of Truth that she had ever seen before.

The men were already moving towards Julia. She inched away closer towards her motorbike. One of them lifted his arms and pretended to lunge at her and, being physically diminutive compared to them, she flinched away, making them laugh.

"Why are you following me like this?" She called out at them.

"I've already explained this to you, and now you're wasting our time. You're going to come with us now." The woman said. Any pretense of cordiality was gone, she was all severity. "We're just lucky that we could locate you before you could hurt yourself."

Julia made the assumption that she had either been betrayed by the prole woman, they had used surveillance to find her, or tracked the mobile phone that she had stupidly brought with. She tensed while the woman was talking, preparing to make a break for it.

"We put out tabs for you, although it was unexpected that you would end up in a place like this." the woman continued. "You're so desperate to get away when we could just get this over with, this could all be finished by now."

The men were getting closer still. She was so angry now, the kind of anger that is completely unconcerned with physical wellbeing, she would not make it easy for them to take her.

She decided that she was more likely now than ever to catch them by surprise and she leapt towards her motorbike, while they remained somewhat relaxed in the belief that they had her cornered. They both ran at her simultaneously, so quickly that they would have caught her if there hadn't been a distance between them and the bike. Julia managed to get to it before they did. With uncharacteristic quickness, she even started it before they reached her. They grabbed at her while she accelerated, she turned a knob, making the motorbike ascend as it sped up, and to everyone's surprise, not the least of which was Julia's, she managed to clear the run-down fencing that surrounded the parking lot. However, she hadn't been able to get enough speed as she took off, so the back wheel of the bike hit the fence as it went over. The bike landed badly. There was a foreboding rattle as it set off again, it having fortunately landed on an empty block of land that connected back to the side streets.

The ground was soft from the rain, and mud splattered everywhere from the back wheel of the bike. In a moment, Julia was back on the road again. She couldn't hear or see her pursuers, although she assumed that they would still be pursuing. She threw her phone away. Her poor injured bike shuddered and wheezed.

Julia went back towards the main roads, looking for a motorway again, while she regained her breath. In the increased traffic, she worried less about being recognised. She found one without any trouble, following her earlier plan of going to the city to achieve anonymity, although it would be hard to blend in, in the muddy state she was currently in.

Some time later, towards the outskirts of the city, things brightened up a bit from the multitude of electric lighting that lit the pavement and bitumen as if it was day time. It stopped raining. Although it was so late, the city was busy and alive with blooming parks with flowers imported from similar climates, flowerboxes in windows and on top of fences, impressive buildings, and trees that weren't wily and menacingly close to death like they were in the prole slums. It was here that Julia's bike finally broke down.

The shuddering clanking increased until finally she stopped at traffic lights and her bike would no longer accelerate at all, but instead groaned at her when she tried to make it do so. She had to wheel it to the side of the road with strangers beeping at her and rushing by.

What will I do now, she thought, sitting dejectedly at a public seat, next to an apparently homeless, prole man, who had been sleeping there.

She felt very angry and afraid. She felt like not knowing for sure what this was all about was the most frustrating thing of all. She thought of that woman, talking to her like an angry teacher, and like she was a child, and she felt even more annoyed.

Disturbing Julia out of her thoughts, the man sitting next to her said, "Is that yours?" pointing to the bike.

"Yes." She said.

"Looks sad, a bit." The man said. He had a short, blonde beard, but what looked like a comfortingly friendly face underneath it, looking down at her with very blue eyes, and an expression both interested and concerned.

"It broke down." Julia said, as a meager explanation.

The man sniffed in agreement, "Where're you headed?" He said.

"I'm going back home." Said Julia, making the decision on the spot. Who were these people to scare her away from her own home anyway?

"How're you goin' to get there without that? You callin' someone for help?" Enquired the man, gesturing towards the bike again.

"I think I'll just leave it there." Said Julia, "I haven't decided how to get there yet."

"I'm O'Brien, what's yours?"

Julia guessed the man was asking her name. "Julia." She said.

"You looking to travel, Julia, you could use the bus." The man then, very kindly, and as if he would only do it for her and for no one else, went on to give Julia advice about where to catch public transport from. He seemed to know exactly what she had been through, even though she didn't tell him, and was deeply sympathetic.

"But if you're running away then, you could always come with me, I'll show you where you can get a good price for that." Gesturing towards the bike a third time. "I know a man as can repair them or sell the parts, I don't know for sure what he does with them, but you get a good price. You runnin' away on foot won't get you far, come with me then. There's cameras all over the city. There's one right there." Julia's attention was directed to a very suspect looking streetlight nearest to where they were sitting. "If they find you, they'll break your knees, I promise you. I heard some things. Come with me." There was such a warm way about him and he spoke with such concern, Julia wanted to accept. He looked like he was nearing middle age, his heavy eyebrows were raised questioningly as he was scanning her face the whole time she was considering his offer.

Julia respectfully declined, but offered the bike to him instead and he gave her his bus ticket in exchange, with a shrug and some well wishes. He then gleefully got up from the seat to wheel the bike away, thinking about all the victory gin he could get from the spare parts. "'Ave a good one, Julia." He said over his shoulder as he went.

It probably wasn't the best deal Julia had ever made, but what need did she have for money, or a motorbike that didn't work anyway?

So she followed the man's advice and went to catch the bus. He told her which one would go in the direction she wanted, and leave at the time she wanted. The bus was really more like a trolley with a motor. It ran all day and all night, the man had said. Its passengers were exclusively proles, on everyday apart from today when Julia was joining them.

As the bus finally came, Julia forced herself into a state of relaxation. But, she thought, if that woman in the petrol station had recognised her and had effectively turned her in, it was likely that these people, the bus driver and all the passengers, could do the same. But she didn't care, that's why she was heading home, Julia thought with the most self-delusion she could possibly muster.

The bus left the vicinity of the city. As it left, Julia looked back on the big sign of Big Brother, looming over the closest building. The image was identical to the one she had on her kitchen wall, the government-issued image of a ruggedly handsome, middle aged man, with the words 'Big Brother' in block letters written underneath, although this one was luminescent with back lights, making it all the more imposing. Even from such a distance, it still looked like it was watching her.


	4. Yard-Change

After the harrowing bus rides, which amounted to three in total, all of them seeming to take the arranging of a small military campaign and making her feel frustratingly slow and vulnerable, along with the long walks in between, Julia made it back home again early in the morning, before the sun had even risen.

She had expected people to be there waiting for her when she returned, to burst out of the house threatening her and then to take her away, but instead her house was comfortingly familiar, even with the front door ajar and the garage left open. The neighbourhood as a whole was eerily quiet. Inside the house, surprisingly, nothing was missing or destroyed or altered in any way. The Big Brother poster watched Julia unwelcomingly as she entered. It was indeed a shock to find no one there at all. Julia thought of the strange day and night she'd been through, and wondered again if she exaggerated the whole thing and caused herself all that suffering. It had easily been the longest day of her entire life.

In any case, Julia immediately went to close the garage and push her couch against the front door as a barricade, just in case. To hell with the 'hidden' camera. She ate whatever food she could find in her kitchen and then changed her clothes, which had large splotches of hairdye on them, into softer clothes that she could sleep in. She washed her frightfully dyed face until it was almost clean, stuck her head under the tap to get rid of the excess dye and the rust from the roof of that old building, dried herself off and went straight to bed.

Worn down to her very edges with tiredness, and exhausted from the whole episode, she went to sleep straight away.

A few hours passed peacefully enough and then Julia regretfully woke up completely of her own accord at some time towards midday, because, she supposed from the loud sounds of birds in the front yard. Still very tired, she lay in bed, trying to relax and hoping that her easeful sleep would come back again. She was just starting to drift off, when, instead of going back to sleep, she heard a soft, concerning sound from the next room like something slowly sliding across the carpet; concentrating as hard as she could, she tried to decide what that it was.

Was it the movement of the couch-barricade in the living room? Was there someone there, carefully sliding the door open?

The noise went on for a few more moments and then stopped, a little bit too abruptly. With her usual vigilance, and keeping the events of her recent history firmly in mind, Julia didn't wait for further evidence and immediately jumped to the worst conclusion. In a familiar state of panic, she climbed silently out of bed, put on some shoes, went to her bedroom window and promptly jumped out of it. The drop from the window wasn't high, but the backyard was a little boxed in area, and there was no way out apart from over the fence, since, of course, her neighbour's flats were both joined to hers at the sides, and she had no back door that she could subtly sneak through, apart from the sliding windows of her living room. She did consider using them to burst in on the intruders, brandishing her garden rake out of sheer fury, but in the end Julia decided better of it. Suppose they were armed?

Julia had landed right in the middle of a small flower garden, crushing some of her lilies. From here, she edged her way along the back wall of her house, past her living room windows, which thankfully had the curtains drawn, and then stopped under the kitchen window where she thought she could listen to hear if there was someone inside. The window was open a little bit and she thought she could hear movement, but she couldn't be sure.

A few moments passed before her suspicions were confirmed. She heard someone who sounded male whisper, "I can't find her.", another person responding: "Well, cover the house and look harder. An informant told us that she was heading home by bus, and then surveillance saw her in this room about five hours ago."

Julia felt her heart pound with all her worries ignited again. She wondered who the informant was, and hoped it hadn't been the prole man. She'd liked him, he'd been so helpful- and she'd given him her bike!

"Our informant was a blonde prole man with a beard." Whispered the voice as if in an after thought.

Ah, so there really was no escape! No one to trust.

Julia sank into lonely dejection, there, squatted pathetically under her kitchen window. Such a destined wretch as her, washed headlong from the board, of friends, of hope, of all bereft, she considered going back inside and just doing what these sinister researchers asked her to. Then she thought of the text she'd gotten more than twenty-four hours ago, the one that had been sent as a warning before any of this happened. With the thought that at least somewhere in the world, Julia had one friend - and also the more practical thought that the prophetic text wouldn't have been sent for no reason if these people were harmless - she got up, ran to the fence, and with much effort, managed to scramble over it and into her neighbour's backyard.

Luckily there was no one there to yell at Julia, to ask her what the heck she was doing there in their backyard. The yard was almost identical to Julia's, except that they had a garden chair where Julia had her lilies, and a lemon tree in the centre, which concealed Julia a little bit from the view of the tinted sliding windows of the house. Thinking that she needed to get as far away from those intruders as she could, Julia pushed on and jumped over another fence.

The same again. There were no bushes to hide in and no way out, apart from through a stranger's house, so Julia pushed on and jumped a few more fences, getting progressively better at it as she went. She worked up a kind of rhythm. None of her neighbours were there, although through the window of the third house, she thought she saw a confused looking young face watching her. She also passed a dog that was so old and lazy it didn't move, but just eyed her with boredom as she ran past and launched herself at another fence. She finally reached one fence, which had, on the other side, a crosshatched metal sheet, covered in grape vines and taller than the top of the fence itself, so that it loomed over the others, and bent from the weight of the vines. Just looking at it, Julia could tell that it would be a very difficult one to get over. She climbed up, gripping the wooden planks that supported the sheet of the fence. She made it to the top, but the metal and the vines proved a particular problem as they caught at her pants leg as she climbed over. She frantically managed to free herself, but heard a shout from the distance, and, from the height that she was at, awkwardly visible at what was probably the top of the tallest fence in the neighbourhood, perched up there precariously, like some kind of bizarre bird or cat, she looked over and saw her own backyard with a number of intruders standing in it and pointing over at her. Then they started running.

In a moment of panic, Julia fell off the fence and hit her head on the ground with a heavy thud.

Like the fence had been, the backyard she was in was much different to the others. Along with being larger, with a lush garden, rather than just lawn and a few meager plants, there was a sizable, fancy veranda, on which a pretty woman in a long sundress was reclining on a deckchair, and started up in alarm on seeing Julia, a stranger in her property, plummet from the fence. The back of the house looked different as well- more ornamented than Julia's plain white flat.

Julia didn't stop to wonder why this was, though. Nor did she pay attention to the concerned woman who was coming over from her expansive veranda to see if she was alright. Julia was too concerned with the fact that, somehow, in the fall from the fence, she had become a man!


	5. Blackmail

Suddenly becoming a man was a most perplexing circumstance, without any apparent cause or meaning. Julia was sure that she had never before heard of this happening to anyone else. It was certainly something that doesn't happen every day. Julia's physique had impossibly changed – which was to her something of intense fascination. She flexed a more muscular wrist and spread out the fingers of a less delicate hand, made of heavy knuckles and bigger bones.

She was disturbed out of her examination of herself by the pretty woman who was now standing over her. "Are you alright?" She said.

"I'm alright, I just hit my head. I think there's something wrong with your fence, though." She said, pulling herself up. "I'm sorry about that."

"That's quite alright, as long as you're ok." The woman glanced back towards the fence and continued conversationally, "We meant to get it fixed for ages now, but it wasn't really made to be climbed on, that's true. Are you running away from someone? You look really tired. Come over and take a seat in the shade, I'll get you a drink."

"Thank you very much." Said Julia and followed the woman to the veranda. She was being confusingly kind to a person who was essentially, or entirely, a trespasser and a stranger.

"You look familiar." The woman said, smiling over at Julia as if she knew what she was thinking. "I wouldn't usually be this kind to a trespasser, but you live in this area, right? I think I've seen you around the place."

"I live a few houses down." Julia got a better look at the woman now, and she did look familiar, with her red hair that was a little bit gray at the roots, and an intense expression, the type of person that looks you fixedly, dead in the eye when they speak to you so you don't know where to look and forget how to blink. It seemed strange that she would recognize Julia now that she was a man and all.

"So you've been jumping the neighbour's fences? I always wanted to do that. What do their gardens look like? I have these dreams sometimes where something's chasing me and I have to get away, and I trick them by jumping over the fence, but then I always wake up before they get me. I actually slap myself until I wake up. And it's weird, they say you can't feel anything while you're dreaming, but I always feel it, you know?"

The woman vanished through tinted sliding glass doors into her house before Julia could respond. It became very quiet for a moment, and she had a chance to look around, finally wondering why it was that this property was so much more extravagant than the others- did it denote a closeness to the Inner party? A better job than Julia's was? I have to get out of here, she thought hurriedly, throwing a look back at the fence, expecting the men to show up at any moment. She was stupidly glad to have someone to talk to though, and felt bad for running away from the woman. Chances were the men would not recognize her now anyway.

"What's your name?" The woman said, emerging again from the house and handing Julia a glass of juice. "I've probably heard of you before if you moved in when these houses were built like I have, we've probably been neighbours for years now. But I don't know about you, I suppose I haven't really made much of an attempt to get to know my neighbours. I'm Lana Parsons in case you recognize me."

"I'm Julian Stucco." Said Julia, deciding on a name straight away and immediately regretting picking one so close to her own, in case the woman did know of her, but she didn't seem to notice anything.

"Well, you're very daring." She said, and the two of them paused awkwardly for a moment. There was the sound of a bang from somewhere over the fence that made Julia jump.

"What do you suppose that was?" Said Lana. "Maybe it was just the fence, maybe a screw came loose or something when you fell like that."

"Probably." Said Julia, and then in an afterthought added, "I don't mean to be rude, but perhaps I should be going soon? You don't think I could cut through your house, do you? I was just thinking it would be easier than jumping any more fences and my head still hurts quite a bit from my fall."

"Well you must stay here then, you could be concussed! Here, sit down for a while, and I'll protect you if anyone comes." She laughed, and pressed a compliant Julia down into her seat. "You seem harmless enough to me, I don't know who would be after you to make you jump over fences like that. Not the thought police, I hope?"

Julia laughed in a way that sounded painful even to herself.

Lana gave her a strange searching look, and said, "I'm not so afraid of them anymore, to be completely honest." She paused, as if waiting for a response, in a way that seemed to Julia oddly tactful and yet prying, and, on getting none, she continued, "Do you live on your own, then?"

Lana went on to fuss over her. She seemed somehow desperate for Julia to stay, in a way that made Julia think that she didn't get company very often. She was indeed a very singular woman.

They got to talking a while longer. The woman seemed deeply interested in whatever small talk Julia was making and seemed to have a very indiscriminant sense of humour and kept squeazing her shoulder, giving her looks that were practically melting. Julia was beginning to get an inkling of where this strange kindness was coming from. She must make an attractive man. Julia caught her own reflection a few times in one of the woman's glass doors, and managed to study herself for long enough to get a good impression of what she looked like now. As a man, she was slightly too thin and slightly too short, but her face had improved. She looked better as a man than she had as a woman. Her features had gotten stronger, but they were still unusually fine for a man, and her skin was unusually good. The woman kept touching her, and in truth Julia was happy enough to get the attention; she seemed nice, if in a slightly aggressive way. In the interest of getting away, though, Julia began to answer her in shorter syllables, and pull away a little bit, which Lana didn't seem to like very much. Julia kept her eyes on the fence, waiting for her pursuers to inevitably catch her up.

Finally, after the space of at least half an hour, they arrived; two men in business suits plummeted from the same fence that had proved so fateful for Julia. Both of them hit their heads with bangs clearly audible from the veranda.

"Oh, my fence will be ruined if this keeps happening." Said the woman. She didn't rush over to help the men as she had with Julia. They got up on their own, and she was watching Julia very closely instead, as Julia was watching them in terror. She felt she had to forcibly calm herself, lest she be given away. But her hands were still shaking slightly as the men took a few steps towards them.

But the worry was needless; they didn't seem to recognize her at all. They bowed towards the veranda at Julia and Lana and said, "Excuse us, please." Then they waddled across the garden towards the adjacent fence. It was immediately apparent why it had taken the men so long to catch up with Julia; they were terrible at jumping fences. They did not have the upper-body strength to pull themselves up to the top either metal or wooden bar that lined each fence in the neighbourhood and nor, in this case especially, could they easily jump high enough to grasp it in the first place. They stood there, jumping up and down in front of Lana's fence, trying to reach the top pole and it looked a bit comical from such a distance.

"Well," Said the woman, "Are these the people you were running from? No? If not you then they must be after someone else, which seems a coincidence that is, frankly, quite hard to believe. How many houses down from here did you say you were from, again?"

Julia found that she could not look away from the men, when she answered "I-I don't know those men. This is all just a coincidence."

But the woman just looked at her shrewdly, "So they are after you then? And why is that?" Her eyes had gotten very wide and she moved in uncomfortably close to Julia. "Well, this is interesting. This doesn't happen everyday, that's for sure."

"I know what this looks like, but I promise I don't know those men."

"Well then. If you don't know them, how about I call them over?" and when Julian blanched, she smiled slowly and said, "How about you kiss me, or maybe I'll do just that?" She snorted at her own bluntness and moved closer still, making Julian smile too, thinking it was a joke. "I'm not joking." Said the woman, who had become very serious again.

Julian gave the woman another quick smile, hoping that this was still a part of the joke, he kissed the woman, with just a quick peck, and the woman laughed, like it was hugely funny. "Come here, then." She said, pulling him into a corner, against where the sliding doors joined to the brick, and breathing heavily now, she said "Kiss me properly, or I'll call them over."

Julian was quite disconcerted. The joke was going too far. He was, after all, not used to being a man and didn't really want anything too much from this woman, which seemed to be where this was ultimately headed. But at the threat of blackmail, no matter how light hearted it seemed to be, he didn't think that he had a choice. The men were meanwhile straddling the top of the fence, building up the courage to jump down. Julian thought that if he could just keep Lana from calling out to them for long enough for them to get over into the neighbour's garden, he still had a good chance of escape.

She pressed herself against him, or rather pulled him until he fell forwards against her, and then kissed him again with a rough intensity. She was pawing at him, when- in a fit of squeamish coyness, or perhaps to test his avidity, Lana pushed Julian away from her.

"What are you doing?" She said, strangely annoyed, "Kiss me, or I'll call those people over here and tell them who you are."

Confused, Julian thought there was no point arguing that she had been the one to push him away and that it hadn't been indecision on his part, and instead he returned to kissing her. He pressed against her again, she had her hands in his hair and it was pulling almost painfully, and then- perhaps as another part of a joke, or from a sudden feeling of revulsion, the woman pushed him away a second time.

Julian took an exasperated step back to ask her what was wrong, but before he could, she said, "Do it, I won't tell you another time, or I'll call them over."

So for the third time, he leaned against her and they gently tipped back together and hit the wall. This time he caught one of her hands, a sign of enthusiasm, he hoped, and to prove that it wasn't him who pushed her away.

He was finding it more appealing this time. He kissed her, he touched her, and then once again, she managed to squirm away from him.

"That's it!" Declared Lana, she cupped her hands around her mouth and called to the men, with a voice that seemed to Julian to be magnified several times beyond a normal human volume: "She's over here! She's over here, only you don't recognize her because she's changed her hair colour and also her gender!"

This, needless to say, immediately got the attention of the two men


	6. Headquarters

Julian ran away from the woman, who had begun lashing out at him with heavy hits and slaps, over the veranda he went towards the fence, blindly and frantically, as the men leapt down from it. They charged at him. Julian realized immediately that they had only been feigning a kind of incompetence in order to suspiciously watch Lana and himself, perhaps they had lingered in every garden up until now in order to check it thoroughly. Still, he was over to the other side of that fence long before they got anywhere near him.

The garden he alighted in looked the same, if a little bit more grand, than Lana's had been. He felt somehow different now, and, looking down, realized with a shock that he was once more a woman, his old self, Julia again. She felt a sense of relief; she had not enjoyed her brief interval as a man.

This garden, also like Lana's, had more grape vines surrounding the expansive veranda, particularly towards the fence opposite to Julia's current vantage point. She would practically have to climb them as if they were a beanstalk to get to the other side, so instead she decided that she would cut through the stranger's house like a burglar. She quickly crossed the yard, jumped the stars to the veranda, threw open the glass doors, thankfully unlocked, and found herself in an elegant wooden interior, varnished floors and paneled walls, with a telescreen twice the size of her own, on which an enormous head of big brother was watching her and mouthing what looked like threats and profanities, but she didn't stop for long enough to make sure.

Here, the kitchen was across from the living room, across from the kitchen was a short hallway, down which Julia could see a front door and the light, through its semi-transparent window, that indicated a small glimpse of freedom. On the couch in the living room, a young woman in track pants and a pony tail gave Julia a surprised look. Julia indicated for her to be quiet, and then pointed to the front door, hoping that she would understand that Julia was harmless and just about to leave. Instead, and just as Julia had anticipated, the girl tossed her head back and bellowed, "Mum, someone's here!"

Julia heard a clatter from outside, and guessed that it was the men, finally making it over the fence. She heard a door closing from somewhere within the house. Trembling with panic, and a strong intuitive feeling of dread as if she knew already that she'd met a dead end, she ran in the direction of the front door.

Down that hallway, a door opened to her left and a foot shot out suddenly and tripped her up. Time seemed to slow down terribly between Julia briefly becoming airborne, and the inevitable impact of her head with the front door. It hit her head just below her hairline, and when she put her hand to where it hurt she could feel the moistness of herself bleeding, with the blow adding to head injury she'd received from falling off the fence before, knocking her well and truly senseless. Tiny fences bubbled up in front of her vision- fences upon fences- she felt like she was going to vomit.

The short and slender, yet somehow stately woman who had tripped her over, was now standing just to her left- unmistakably once again the dark woman from the phone call, the dark woman who had tracked Julia down to that empty building, who Julia had heard but not seen in her own house.

"Well now, Miss Julia, this is convenient." She said, a smile on her pixie face that didn't reach her enormous dark eyes.

Julia could hear the throbbing of the men's footsteps as they caught up with her to where she was hopelessly sprawled on the ground; no escape was available this time, she would be hurried into their terrible black van and no one would ever hear of her again. She gathered herself up, huddled up closer towards the front door, not quite brave enough to stand up yet.

"Strange as it seems," Said the woman, "You've lucked straight into one of our Dunderhaven headquarters. If we planned it, it couldn't have gone any better. Here, get up now, and away from that door."

One of the men came forward and pulled Julia groggily to her feet.

"Not worth the effort at all really, is she?" He said.

"Not my orders. I don't understand either, surely we don't really need her. Maybe it's a personal thing, like a vendetta or something." Replied the woman, and focusing again on Julia, said, "Now, we'll be needing you to go down that hall there, through that door and down the stairs."

Julia looked over. The hallway was just to her left and was preceded by an opened heavy, dungeon-like door. The hallway itself looked dark and claustrophobic, compared to where Julia was currently standing, still with the light of freedom coming through the small window on the front door, the floor vanishing away down that hallway, supposedly into stairs. A more foreboding space Julia had never seen. She knew for a fact that, on going down that corridor as had been suggested, and down those stairs, never would she ascend them again.

Paralysed for a moment with the thought of her own misfortune, she was instead shoved forward by the man.

Down, down the hallway she went, down the black stairs and tripping along the way in the dark. At the very base of this tunnel was a door. The woman pushed Julia aside and opened it, pushing her on through.

There she found herself, in a tiled, perfectly cleaned room, practically gleaming with disinfectant, that looked very much like a laboratory.


	7. Laboratory

-7-

Julia found out later that this sanitized room was just a part of the bowels of a tomb-like laboratory, extending over a number of chamber-like rooms and this, the entrance, was the least malevolent, although to Julia it was the harbinger of a terrible doom that she wasn't quite certain of yet. It was brightly lit with fluorescent lights, and completely white, very much gleaming unnaturally. A short, dapper looking middle aged man with grey hair and in a lab coat greeted them at the far door, and they were each given a coat, gloves and a face mask. Julia's was wrested upon her by one of the men; to avoid unnecessary injury, she let them get on with it.

They followed the man through double-glass doors into another room, with a long vault against one wall, reaching up to the ceiling, higher than even the tallest of the party could have reached without a ladder. Julia could hear strange sounds emanating from the vault, like a number of human moans, but that was morbid she thought, it must be something else, they could never get ethics approval for that kind of thing, surely they wouldn't be testing on human subjects. She heard louder moans still, groans like something from a Frankenstein movie; she looked over at the vault in horror. They all looked something like lockers, it was hard to explain the difference- they were cleaner? More expensive than university or gym lockers? The man noticed Julia's concern, and told her, "Here, you see, this is where we keep our subjects." He went over to the vaults, opened one by entering a digital code into a small computer board, it beeped indicating his success, he swung open the door, and pulled out an empty tray, like the ones found in a morgue, large enough for a man to lie on. Understanding immediately, Julia looked at him in disgust, and he said, "Oh, we have used ones, if you want to see."

He entered the code for a second locker-like door, and then he swung it open. When he pulled out the tray, there was a man lying on it, full-lengthed, bound hand, foot and mouth, he squirmed grotesquely, helplessly on the tray, moaning at the party, his wild eyes fixed for a moment on Julia, and she fought to get away from the man that still had her by the wrists, back towards the door she had come from in, away from this terror. The test subject was naked, except for a number of bandages over his forearm, his wrist and his waist. He had a drip, injected into the veins of his inner elbow, a chain collar around his neck and wrists, all attached to the tray, to stop him escaping, and, still hidden by the dark, she suspected that there were identical chains also binding his ankles, where the scientists had methodically chained him following their experiments.

"This specimen, we've injected with stomach cancer of the mucosa." Said the man.

"And don't worry," He continued, "We follow the Minitrue SECHS guidelines- standards of ethical conduct for experiments on human subjects to the best of our ability; we limit the number of test subjects, limit their suffering and discomfort where possible and ensure that all testing is absolutely necessary, with promising outcomes more or less proven to be guaranteed, before testing can even begin. This way we know that testing is worthwhile and suffering is as closely balanced as possible to scientific rewards of the study. You see, often animal subjects are just too anatomically different from humans that results aren't translatable. Wait, but of course, you already knew that."

"But this has been done before," Said Julia, "How can it be ethical, it's like a war crime!"

"For the greater good." Said the woman, and, "scientific progress." Said the man.

"Let's continue our tour. Maybe you'll be persuaded by our state of the art equipment." He continued.

Julia looked back towards the vaults, she couldn't guess how many there were in total- two hundred? The moans combined to make a terrible din, she couldn't believe she wasn't dreaming it all. "Persuaded of what? What for? What am I good for in all this?" Said Julia.

"Of your participation, to continue your research. We're improving on your team's idea because it was so promising, you see, but with more finesse from our top minds, and of course with access to testing on subjects of a human anatomy, and the human physiological make up, we believe we can improve upon it. There are only minor things we need from you and then you'll be done, you shan't need to worry."

It was just such a practical thing to this man, Julia almost trusted him. "And then when we're done, you'll let me go?" She said, realizing immediately the naiveté of her own question.

She caught a smirk from the woman whose job it had been to track her down for so long. "I'm sure we'll come to some arrangement." Said the coated man, with a smile that he must have practiced a million times on numerous stake-holders and during networking functions with business associates, "I'm sure afterwards, when we're done, we can assign you to one of our less nasty studies; perhaps a study that allows for use of painkillers on test subjects, where the painkillers do not interfere with results, of course. We need all the test subjects we can get, it's just such a complicated job finding people who won't be missed, as Sarah can attest." He nodded towards the woman. "Sometimes we're allocated subjects from the Ministry of Love, but these are getting increasingly rare. And you've made yourself such a difficulty to get ahold of, we have to make the best of you, I'm afraid, otherwise all this energy would have been expended for nothing." He continued thoughtfully, "and we can't have you telling tales, this being a classified and controlled enterprise."

Julia looked from the man to Sarah and back again, it seemed that there was no escape. And it weighed on the back of her mind- if she got out of here, where would she go besides? They would track her down in the city or in the industrial districts, and when she couldn't even trust the proles, who else was there to go to?


	8. Chapter 8

_He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. - George Orwell, 1984_

The tour continued. Julia came to understand that the underground laboratory looped back on itself in a circle, reconnecting again with the second room she had entered.

There were six rooms in total- the sterilized entrance, the morgue-room, connected to an offshoot of a room that was still more sterilized, in which the experiments were performed, a study filled with computers and with a telescreen on the wall, a walk-through storage room and finally a room that gave no pretense of being anything but a dungeon. In this room, the man announced, "And this is where you will be staying while you help us with our studies, until you're done, when you will of course be staying with our other test subjects."

There was cold slate on the floor and the walls were like exposed rubble. Along the walls hung cuffs and chains and crouched on the floor were two people, stripped to their underwear and chained by their wrists. Julia gave an involuntary sign of surprise when one of them looked up at her and she remembered her as one of her former colleagues.

Julia was taken from the room, her tour continued in a mundane fashion. Some implements and technology was explained and demonstrated to her. Photos of techniques were shown, seemingly picked out for their cruelty.

It was getting late; she was eventually taken back to the dungeon, chained up and left there.

Her eyes went from one captive to another, she didn't know the second one and he stared blankly back at her.

"Julia," Said her work colleague, "Don't you recognize me?"

"Of course I do." It was a woman by the name of Ashley.

"I sent you a message, did you get it? Did it help at all?"

"The text message? So that was you then. Yes, it did help."

"I stole a mobile phone from one of the researchers. I brought it back here when they were gone and we called the authorities, I called my family, no one ever came. I gave them details about where we are. I may as well have given them a map!

"They were telling me that they were coming to find you. That woman left me to make the phone call, and that's when I sent you the message. I'm so glad it made a difference, I was worried that I hadn't done enough."

"They're in cohorts with the thought police, no one would have the authority to break us out." Said Julia, "I would have ended up here no matter what you could have done for me."

The woman paused, and then continued, "A man did come in here a one point, but he said nothing the whole time, he wrote on a clipboard and searched all the rooms. Shortly afterwards that telescreen in the computer room was installed. I think he might have been an inspector."

They talked together for some time after that. Ashley told how, much like Julia, she had received a phone call, but unlike Julia, she had entered the black van compliantly. The man's story too was practically identical to Ashley's.

Julia talked about the weird things that happened to her and the inevitability with which she ended up in the laboratory. Mercifully, Ashley did not speak of the test subjects, and what was done to them. Julia would find out soon enough.

The researchers came back the next morning. From the dungeon room, Julia had been awakened by the sound of the door closing, and people talking.

The man in the lab coat entered the room, along with another researcher who Julia had never seen before. "A fine morning, Julia. A pity you can't see it." Said the man. He unchained her, leaving Ashley and the other man where they were. He beckoned her to follow him, and they went into the study/computer room. "We will go through what we've been doing so far and get you up to date."

He showed her a few papers, he flicked through a slide show of information, explaining various topics.

As he neared his conclusion, he seemed to be working himself up into a state of profound excitement. He began making lofty statements: "We're changing the world for the better. Eliminating illness, defeating death and mother nature." And he ended with the observation: "We must function on logic and fact in these times, within these chambers if we want to have an effect on anything. Outside, Big Brother can force us to believe that 2+2=5, but down here it is always 4. 2+2, without exception, will equal 4."

He was disturbed from continuing the thought by the sound of an alarm going off. "Oh my lord." He said, he was looking at Julia with terror.

"What happened?" She said, but the man was silent.

There was a lag between the initial warning and the impact, but it seemed to Julia to happen immediately. There was a bang. The door of the laboratory burst inwards. It was the thought police who broke in.

They were all dressed in black, about five of them.

"It was nothing!" Said the man. "It was an exaggeration. I was making a point." He had his hands up in supplication at the five guns pointed at him.

One of the police approached and hit him squarely across the face with a baton. The man fell to the floor. "If this facility questions the authority of Big Brother it must be shut down!" He said, as his comrades approached to pick the man up to his feet. "Big Brother has eyes everywhere, even in research. Big Brother is logic. Big Brother is reason. 2+2=5."

The man was dragged from the facility.

"You will all be freed. You may go about your business. We allowed this enterprise at first, because it seemed to be of more good than harm. It has questioned the regime, it will now come to an end. This never happened. Speak of it and there will be consequences."

A stream of more thought police entered the room as this man left. They set about destroying everything, freeing people and repeating the orders.

Such is the power of Big Brother, he can erase a traumatic event with only a single command. And what else could Julia do? The test subjects were freed, Ashley was freed and they collectively left the chamber to go back to their lives, some maimed permanently by the study.


End file.
